What the Warriors did to the Clippers Sunday? That's just the playoffs.

To save this post, select a stash from drop-down menu or type in a new one:

Chris Ryan of Grantland writes:

After Game 4, Doc Rivers said, “I just believe when the game starts, the game starts and nobody cares anymore. Golden State surely didn’t care.” We all know what events prompted the first sentence in that quote. I’m here to talk about the second sentence. I’m here to talk about Golden State sticking the knife in on Sunday. And twisting.

The playoffs are about matchups. That’s why coaching matters so much; you need someone at the helm who knows how to exploit weakness. Maybe you see that a guy is struggling with an injury, or struggling from lack of sleep because he was out too late the night before. Or maybe you see that the team you are playing is embroiled in a controversy that has jumped the fence from TMZ to SportsCenter to the kind of thing your mom calls to ask you about, and maybe they’ve been knocked off their square a little bit.

And that’s when you strike.

Yes, Mark Jackson would have liked to have won any one of or all the preceding games in this series. But he had to have this one. I’m sure Klay Thompson envisioned himself doing this earlier in the series …

… but he certainly picked the right time to do it.

After the game, Chris Paul admitted to being nervous beforehand; J.J. Redick looked like he’d just sat down and watched all the Transformersmovies, back to back to back, in slow motion. This stuff must have been evident to the Warriors. It must have been evident to Steph Curry, who went for 33 points and picked the perfect night to score 27 of those 33 on jump shots, and to come to the game dressed up as a fireball.

Nothing about what is happening to the Clippers, as a team, is fair. What the Warriors did to them on Sunday, though? That’s just the playoffs.